The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Human Cycle through the Worlds of the Senses, Soul, and Spirit

A public lecture

[ 1 ] Last Thursday’s lecture was intended to describe the paths through which human beings can enter the spiritual worlds, and an attempt was made to show how even a simple observation of the successive events in the course of our lives between birth and death reveals laws—great laws—that point to a spiritual world lying beyond the physical world; and a rough outline was provided of how human beings themselves can then enter this spiritual world.

[ 2 ] Today we shall discuss, in broad outlines, a chapter from those insights that the spiritual researcher can attain through the method described the day before yesterday. To an even greater degree, of course, than in the lecture given the day before yesterday, everything said today could be regarded as a kind of fantasy. However, following the discussions from the day before yesterday, it may safely be assumed that what is to be presented today—simply in the form of a straightforward narrative—will be regarded as a summary of research findings that arise precisely from the observation of the higher worlds. So today, I shall simply recount the experiences a person has as they progress after death through the various worlds through which they are destined to pass.

[ 3 ] We must begin at that point in human development where a person stands when he passes through the gate of death—that is, when, as described yesterday, he sheds his physical body and ascends into another, spiritual existence. What a person first experiences immediately upon passing through the gate of death, after shedding the physical body, is what we shall consider first.

[ 4 ] The first impression that our astral body and our “I” have after a person’s death is that the person can look back on the life that has just passed—the life that unfolded between birth and death—and see it as a comprehensive tableau of memories. The individual events of the past life, which have long since vanished from the spiritual gaze, appear before the soul, so to speak, in all their details at this important turning point in life. And when we ask ourselves: How is such a thing possible? — then we can at least make sense of what presents itself to the clairvoyant eye by pointing to those well-known moments in life described by people who have once been in mortal danger, such as during a fall in the mountains or when they were close to drowning. They recount that in such moments, their entire past life appeared before their eyes as if in a great painting. What is recounted in this way can certainly be confirmed by Spiritual Science.

[ 5 ] How is it, then, that at such a moment a person’s entire past life appears before their eyes as if in a great painting? This is because that which can be seen with physical eyes and grasped with physical hands—what is called the physical body—is permeated and imbued with the etheric or Life-Body. This is the second—and indeed already invisible—component of the human being, which, in the time between birth and death, prevents the physical body from following the physical, physiological, and chemical forces and laws implanted within it. This etheric or Life-Body, this second body of the human being, is, so to speak, our faithful fighter against the decay of the physical body.

[ 6 ] Now, it may well be understandable that, from a physical perspective—that is, from the standpoint of physical science—the entire human being appears to succumb to death upon its onset; for that which passes through the gateway of death—and which then experiences the impressions that are about to be described—exists only for spiritual perception, only for a clairvoyant eye. But everything that exists only for spiritual perception must necessarily appear as nothing to the physical eye.

You will see nothing in the eternally empty distance,
You will not hear the steps you take,
You will find nothing solid where you rest!

[ 7 ] So says Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust. It will indeed be so forever. This characterization reveals Mephistopheles as the representative of a worldview that focuses solely on external, physical existence and regards as nothingness everything that lies beyond this physical existence and can be attained through spiritual knowledge. But eternal, too, will be the one who has a sense and an understanding that powers lie dormant within the human being, which can be developed in such a way that spiritual worlds burst into this human soul, just as light and color burst into the operated eye of one born blind; eternal will be this human soul that senses something of such higher knowledge, and it will reply to materialism with the words that Faust replies to Mephistopheles:

In your nothingness, I hope to find the universe.

[ 8 ] Just as Faust hopes to find the universe in nothingness, so too must we turn to the nothingness of materialistic thinking and perception if we wish to grasp that which passes through the gate of death and leaves its impressions even when there are no longer any physical instruments or organs through which an external world can be perceived. This “nothingness” of the materialist—this fundamental essence of human nature as seen by the spiritual gaze—has before it that mighty tableau of memories, in which all the individual experiences of the last life are contained, just as—indeed, in a higher sense—they are contained after that shock a person experiences when in mortal danger, when, for example, they are on the verge of drowning. What actually happens to a person facing mortal danger? Through the shock they have suffered, their etheric or Life-Body has been loosened from their physical body for a brief moment. Now, however, this etheric or Life-Body in human beings—let it be explicitly stated: in human beings—is also the bearer of memory, and in ordinary life, when this etheric or Life-Body is integrated with the physical body, the physical body acts as a kind of barrier, a kind of obstacle to the emergence of all individual memories, all individual mental images. But when the etheric or Life-Body is lifted out of the physical body for a brief moment by such a shock, then the entire life appears before the soul as a panorama of memories, and in such a person, at the moment of drowning, we have a kind of analogue to what occurs immediately after death, when the etheric or Life-Body, with all its powers, has been set free, since the physical body has been shed in death.

[ 9 ] This is the experience one has after passing through the gate of death. But we must characterize it in even greater detail. This experience is of a very peculiar nature. For this recollection is not such that we relive the events of the life just passed in exactly the same way as we experienced them while alive. In life, the events of the day make an impression on us—an impression of pleasure, an impression of joy, an impression of pain, an impression of suffering. They approach us in such a way that we feel sympathy or antipathy toward them. In short, these events stir our emotions and spur us on to exercise our will and our desires in one way or another. All that constitutes pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, sympathy and antipathy—all that constitutes interest in the external manifestations of existence—is, for the period just discussed, as if erased from the human soul, and the image of memory stands there, truly like a picture. When we have a picture before us, when we create a mental image of a scene in which we would suffer terribly—we endure it objectively, neutrally, when it is presented to us in the picture. But in the same way, the memory of one’s entire life also appears before the soul: we experience it without the emotional involvement we otherwise had in life.

[ 10 ] That is one thing. The other is that human beings now experience something immediately after passing through the gates of death—something with which they have become acquainted only to a very limited extent between birth and death, unless they have become spiritual researchers themselves. In life, we are always outside of things, outside of the beings that surround us. The tables and chairs are outside of us; the flora spread across the field is outside of us. The impression immediately after death is as if our being were pouring out over everything that is outside of us. We seem to immerse ourselves in things; we feel at one with them. A sense of the soul spreading out, expanding, and widening arises—a merging with the things that exist in the outer environment as images. This experience lasts—as spiritual research shows us using the methods we have discussed—for varying lengths of time; yet it is generally a brief experience following death. Today, based on more precise clairvoyant research into this matter, we can even speak of how long this experience lasts for each individual, depending on their personality. You know that, under normal circumstances, different people can remain awake for varying lengths of time, if necessary, without being overcome by sleep. One person might, for example, stay awake for three, four, or five days, while another might manage only thirty-six hours, and so on. On average, this flashback lasts approximately as long as a person has typically been able to stay awake in their normal state of life without being overcome by sleep. So it is calculated in days and varies from person to person.

[ 11 ] Then, when this tableau of memories has come to an end, when it has gradually faded—for it depicts a gradual descent into darkness—the person feels something as if certain forces were withdrawing from within them and something that had hitherto been part of their nature were being expelled. That which is cast out is now a second corpse of the human being, an invisible corpse; it is that part of the human being which he cannot take with him from his etheric or Life-Body through the subsequent experiences in the soul world. So while the physical corpse has already been shed and returned to its physical substances and forces, the etheric or Life-Body is now expelled; it disperses into the world we call the etheric world—a world that is nothing to those who can see and think only materialistically, but which permeates and animates everything for those whose spiritual eyes are open. Now, however, something remains from this expelled etheric or Life-Body that can be described as an essence, as an extract of everything that has been experienced. As it were, the experiences of the last existence—compressed into a seed between birth and death—now remain united with that which is the human being. Thus, the fruit of the last life, condensed, persists.

[ 12 ] What, then, does a human being retain as they continue on in their life after death? A human being retains what we call the bearer of their “I,” what we call their “I” in the first place; but this “I” is initially enveloped by what we have characterized as the third member of the human being after the physical body and the Life-Body; this “I” is enveloped by the astral body. We could say that the human being’s astral body is the bearer of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of instincts, desires, and passions. Of all that which flits through our soul during the day as pleasure and pain, as instincts, desires, and passions—the astral body is the bearer of it all; and every night, the “I” and the astral body leave the human physical and etheric, or Life-Body, which remain in bed during sleep. Now, after death, we have united the “I” and the astral body with that life essence which we have just described as having been extracted from the etheric or Life-Body as a fruit or seed. With these components of his being, the human being now continues his journey through the so-called spiritual world. If we wish to understand what the human being’s spiritual vision can reveal to us about this world, we must first realize that it is this astral body that is the bearer of everything that constitutes pleasure, delight, and interest in the things around us. Yes, the astral body is the vessel of all pleasures, desires, all pains and sufferings—even the basest desires, such as those connected, for example, with our nutrition. The physical body is a structure governed by physical and chemical forces and laws. It is not the physical body that experiences pleasure and enjoyment in relation to any food or stimulants—that is the astral body of the human being. The physical body merely provides the tools so that we can obtain such pleasures, which take place within the astral body. Now, anyone who has come to understand that this astral body of the human being is something real, something genuine—not merely a function or a result of the interplay of physical and chemical processes—will not be surprised to hear that at the moment of death, when the physical body is shed, the astral body does not immediately lose its longing for such pleasures. In fact, it does not. Let us take an extreme case—for example, a person who was a gourmet in life, who took pleasure in delicious food. What has happened to him with death? He has lost the ability—because he has shed his physical instruments—to procure these pleasures in his astral body. But the craving for these pleasures has remained in his astral body. The result is that, with regard to these pleasures, the person is now in the same situation—albeit for different reasons—as he would be, for example, if he were in a region during his physical life where he suffered from a burning thirst and there was nothing far and wide that could quench it. After death, the astral body suffers from a burning thirst because the physical organs through which this thirst can be satisfied are no longer present. The physical instruments have been cast off, but the craving for these pleasures has remained in the astral body. The consequence of this is that the human being is now in the same situation with regard to these pleasures; the astral body suffers from a burning thirst. The astral body still contains all those drives, cravings, and passions that can be satisfied only through the physical instruments. Therefore, simply based on this logical consideration, it is understandable what the spiritual researcher must say in this regard: After shedding his etheric or Life-Body, a person goes through a period in which, with regard to his innermost being, he must wean himself from all longings and desires that can be satisfied only through the physical instruments of the physical body. — This is the time of purification, during which all longings for anything that can be obtained only by setting one’s physical instruments in motion must be eradicated from the astral body.

[ 13 ] We will find it understandable that, once again, depending on a person’s individuality, the time that must be endured for the sake of this purification—for the sake of this purging of desires directed solely toward the physical world—will vary. However, a person experiences this period in such a way that it is not merely counted in days, but—according to the findings of spiritual science—takes up approximately one-third of the life in the physical world that has elapsed between birth and death. It is understandable to those who are able to look more deeply into the matter that the period of purification takes up approximately one-third of one’s lifetime. When one surveys human life, one finds that this human life between birth and death is clearly divided into three thirds. The first third of life is intended for the human being’s innate dispositions and abilities, which enter into existence at birth, to work their way through the obstacles of the physical world. A kind of ascending life is present in the first third. As a spiritual being, the human being gradually takes possession of his or her physical organs. Then comes the next third of life, which lasts, on average, from the age of 21 to 42. The first third lasts until the age of 21. This second third of life is devoted to the development of all those powers that a person can unfold by bringing their inner being—their soul—into interaction with the external world. By this point, they have already malleably shaped the organs of their physical and etheric—or Life-Body—body; these no longer present any obstacle. They are fully grown. Their soul enters into a direct relationship with the external world. This continues until the human being must once again begin to draw sustenance from their physical and etheric—or Life-Body—and this then continues for the remainder of their life. Gradually, the human being draws upon once again what they had plastically shaped in their youth. We have been able to draw attention to the wonderful connection that exists between youth and old age. If, during that period in which the inner human being is plastically shaped through the human organs, a person acquires certain qualities; if, during this time, they have overcome various outbursts of anger in their soul; if they have experienced what we call the feeling of devotion—then this finds expression precisely in the last third of life. This flows through the middle third of life like a hidden current. And what we call overcome anger manifests in old age as righteous gentleness, so that the cause of gentleness lies in the overcome anger. And from the mood of devotion that we cultivate in our younger years comes, at the end of life, that quality we see in those people who are able to enter into a community and, without “saying much, have a blessing-like effect.”

[ 14 ] It is clear that a person’s life is divided into three parts. In the first part, a person works to develop their physical body; in the last part, they in turn draw upon their physical body; in the middle part, the soul is, so to speak, left to its own devices. This middle period, as one might expect, must correspond to the period of purification after death. For then the soul is free from the physical body and the etheric or Life-Body and stands in a relationship to its spiritual surroundings similar to that in the second third of life.

[ 15 ] We can logically understand what the spiritual researcher is able to see by taking a look at everyday life. We can understand that the time given is an average figure; for some people, the period of purification will last longer, for others, shorter. It will last longer for those who, with all their passions, are devoted to a purely sensual existence, who know hardly anything other than the satisfaction derived from those pleasures bound to the physical organs of the body. But for those who, in ordinary life, through an immersion in art or through insight, are already able to glimpse what penetrates through the veil of the physical—the spiritual mysteries of existence—and who, even if only intuitively, grasp the revelations of the spirit through the veil of the physical, for them the period of purification will be shorter, for they will pass through the gate of death prepared—prepared for all that can come as fulfillment solely from the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] Here, then, we have a period that a person experiences between death and a new birth, which differs significantly from the time counted in days immediately following death. While during this period—measured in days—we have a neutral tableau of memories before which all our interest and involvement fall silent, it is precisely during the period of purification that we have within our soul everything that has drawn us to our experiences through a longing for pleasure and a longing for desire. It is precisely the emotional life, the life of sensation, that unfolds within the soul during this period of purification.

[ 17 ] However, spiritual research reveals a curious characteristic of this period of purification. As strange as it sounds, it is nevertheless true: this period of purification proceeds backward to forward, so that we have the impression that we first experience the last year of our physical life, then the penultimate, and finally the third-to-last. And so, as we purify and cleanse ourselves, we relive our lives as if in a mirror image; we pass through it in such a way that it appears as if it were moving from death to birth, and at the end of the period of purification, we stand at the moment of birth. First old age, then middle age—we pass through life all the way back to childhood.

[ 18 ] Now, no one need think that this is merely a terrible time, merely a time in which one experiences a burning thirst, in which one endures longings. All of that is certainly present; but it is not the only thing. We also relive everything we have already experienced spiritually between birth and death; we also relive the good events of life in such a way that we have them before us again, as it were, in a mirror image. How this works will become clear to us as we examine this time more closely. Let us suppose a person died at the age of 60. Then he first relives his 59th year, then his 58th, his 57th, and so on; he simply relives everything in reverse, as it were, in a kind of mirror image. For the fact remains that we feel as though we are poured out over the things and beings of the world, as though we are within all beings and things in it. Now let us consider the fact that, in a life that lasted until the age of 60, we might have insulted someone at the age of 40. In that case, we relive those twenty years in reverse at three times the speed. When we reach the age of 40, we relive the pain we inflicted on the other person, but we do not experience what we went through at that time; rather, we experience what the other person went through. If we caused someone pain out of a desire for revenge or a surge of anger, and then, after death, looking back, we come to that moment, we do not feel the satisfaction we experienced at the time, but rather what the other person experienced. We are spiritually transported into their perspective. And so it is with everything we relive as we journey backward. We relive all the acts of kindness and good deeds we have bestowed in life through the beneficial effects they have had on our surroundings.

[ 19 ] We experience this with that soul which feels, as it were, poured out into the entire environment. This is not without effect; rather, as a person experiences everything, they take away certain impressions from all these situations of experience. We can characterize this roughly as follows. But I would like to emphasize that these things can really only be characterized in words by way of comparison, for you can understand that our words are shaped for the physical world and are actually only applicable to this physical world in the proper sense. Since we do use these words—and indeed, we could not otherwise communicate about all the mysterious worlds that open up to the spiritual eye—we must be aware that these words have only an approximate meaning. What is experienced in this context can only be described as follows: When a person perceives the pain they have inflicted on another, when they relive this pain after death, they feel it as an obstacle to their development. They might say to themselves, feeling it in their soul: What would I have become if I had not inflicted this pain on the other person? This pain is something that holds my entire being back from a degree of perfection that it might otherwise have attained. — And so, with regard to all the error and falsehood, all the ugliness that the person has spread in their surroundings, they say to themselves: These are obstacles to development, something I have placed in the path of my own perfection. — And from this a force takes shape within the human soul that leads the person, in the state in which they now live—between death and a new birth—to take on the longing, to take on the impulses of the will, to remove these obstacles from the path. That is to say, step by step, as we journey backward, we absorb impulses to make amends in the coming life and to once again compensate for the obstacles we ourselves have placed in our path.

[ 20 ] Therefore, we must not give in to the belief that what we are going through is merely suffering. It is certainly suffering and deprivation, and it is painful to see all that we ourselves have caused weighing upon our own soul; yet we experience it in such a way that we are glad to be able to go through it, because only through this can we absorb the strength that enables us to remove those obstacles from our path. And so all these impulses that we absorb during the period of purification add up, and when we have returned to the beginning of our last life, there is a powerful sum that lives within us as an immense urge to make amends in a new life—in the subsequent stages of existence—for everything that needs to be made amends for in the sense described. Thus, at the end of the period of purification, we are equipped with the power to develop our will in the future in such a way that compensation is created for all the wrong, ugly, and evil things we have done. This is a power of which a person can gain some inkling when, through wise self-knowledge, they become acquainted with the pangs of conscience it causes them when they reflect on what they have done to this or that person. But all of this remains merely a thought in life. It becomes a powerful creative impulse during the period of purification between death and a new birth. And endowed with this creative impulse, the human being now enters a new life: the truly spiritual life.

[ 21 ] If we wish to understand this spiritual life that a person enters after the period of purification, we can do so in the following way. It is difficult to capture in the words of our language the entirely different experiences that the spiritual researcher has when examining the life between death and a new birth—the entirely different, essential impressions that cannot be compared to anything the eye can see in the sensory world or the intellect, bound as it is to the brain, can conceive; but one can gain a rough idea of what may unfold for the spiritual researcher—like a new world—through his insight into the spiritual world. If you want to look around and comprehend the world, if you want to understand what is around you, then you do so by thinking, by forming mental images of the things around you. It would be a logically absurd mental image, however, if someone were to think that one could scoop water out of a glass that contains none. It would be exactly the same if you were to imagine that you could extract thoughts and laws from a world in which there are no thoughts and no laws. All human knowledge, all human understanding, would be mere daydreaming, nothing more than fantasy, if the thoughts we ultimately form in our minds were not already underlying things as thoughts—that is, if things had not sprung from thoughts. All those who believe that thoughts are merely something formed by the human mind—something that does not underlie things as the actual forces of action and creation—should simply give up all thinking altogether; for the thoughts thus formed, without corresponding to an external world of thought, would be mere figments of the imagination. Only those who know that their thinking corresponds to the external world of thought—and, as in a mirror within us, rekindles that external world of thought—think in a real sense; they know that all things originally sprang forth from this world of thought.

[ 22 ] Thus, while for us humans thought is the last thing we grasp about things, for things themselves it lies at their very foundation. Creative thought underlies things, but human thoughts—through which humans ultimately come to know—differ in a certain, very significant respect from the creative thoughts out there. If you try to look into the human soul, you will say to yourself: No matter how much human thinking may wander within the horizon of thoughts and mental images, as long as a person thinks, as long as he tries to fathom the mysteries of things through his thoughts, they appear to be something far removed from anything creative. — That is the peculiarity of human thoughts: they have lost the productive, creative element contained in the thoughts that permeate and animate the outer world. Those thoughts that permeate the outside world are imbued with the element that first springs up within the human being like a mysterious foundation of our existence. You know, of course, that if your mental images are to be transformed into will, they must plunge into the depths of the human being—that the thought itself is not yet imbued with will. But the thought that works in the outer world is permeated and interwoven with the will. And that is precisely what is unique about the spirit that objectively interweaves itself through things in the outer world: that it is creative. Through this, however, it is no longer merely thought; through this, it is spirit. The thought of human nature has come into being because the will has been forced out of the spirit and because this will appears, like a reflex, only from within the human being. To the spiritual gaze, it appears nowhere in the external world as separate from the creative principle.

[ 23 ] It is into this spirit—which encompasses both will and thought—that a person enters, as if into a new world, after having undergone the process of purification following death. And just as we live here in this world—which we pass through between birth and death—surrounded by the impressions of our senses, surrounded by everything our intellect can conceive, just as we are thus surrounded and enveloped by the physical world here, so too is a person, after the period of purification, enveloped on all sides by the creative, spiritual world. And they are within this creative, spiritual world; they are immersed in it and belong to it. This is also the very first experience that arises once the period of purification has been completed: The human being does not feel themselves to be in a world that surrounds them with a horizon of things they can perceive, but rather they feel themselves to be inside a world where they are thoroughly creative. — Everything that the human being has taken in during their last life and also in earlier lives—insofar as it has not yet been processed—especially what is contained in the described extract of their etheric or Life-Body, what has remained in their astral body as that powerful impulse seeking to compensate for the obstacles that have been recognized, all that which is within the human being—that is what he now feels within himself as productive; that is what he now feels as creative.

[ 24 ] Now, life within productivity is something best described by the term “bliss” or “enjoyment.” Even in everyday life, you can observe this blissful feeling on a lower level when you see a hen sitting on her eggs, hatching them. In production itself lies this warming sense of bliss. In a higher sense, one can perceive this ecstasy of creation when the artist is able to translate what has matured in his soul into the material external world—when he is able to create. The entire human being is now permeated by this feeling of ecstasy—of which one can gain a rough mental image in this way—as he passes through the spiritual world.

[ 25 ] What does a person bring into the spiritual world? He brings into the spiritual world everything he has gained as fruits and as an essence from his last life and other previous lives—things about which we said the day before yesterday that, although they have approached our soul as experiences, the human being, in the life between birth and death, because he is limited by the physical and etheric or Life-Body, must initially keep to himself and cannot incorporate into his entire being. Now that the physical and etheric—or Life-Body—bodies are no longer present, the human being works in purely spiritual substance; now he imprints upon it all that he experienced in his last life but was unable to incorporate into himself due to the limitations of his physical and etheric—or Life-Body—bodies.

[ 26 ] If we now consider the length of time during which a person productively incorporates into the spiritual realm what he or she has gained in the previous life, then we must first and foremost ask ourselves: Does this law of repeated earthly lives, to which we have alluded, have a certain meaning? — Yes, it has a purpose, and this is evident in the fact that when a person has completed one incarnation, they do not reappear in a new life simply so they can relive the same experiences; rather, they reappear only when the external earthly world has changed in the meantime to such an extent that they can have entirely new experiences. Anyone who reflects a little on the course of development will find that, even in physical terms, the physiognomy of the Earth changes considerably from millennium to millennium. Just think for a moment about what it might have looked like here, where this city now stands, in the time of Christ; how different it was then, and how this corner of the Earth has changed since that time; and consider how even what we call the moral, intellectual, and other spiritual development of humanity changes over the course of just a few centuries. Let us consider what children absorbed in their early years just a few centuries ago, and let us consider what they process in their early years today. The Earth changes its appearance, and after a certain time, a person can set foot on the Earth again, and everything there has changed so much that he can now experience something new. Only when a person can experience something new does he truly enter this world anew.

[ 27 ] The period between death and a new birth is determined by the fact that when a human being incarnates—say, in a particular century—he or she, through birth, grows into very specific hereditary circumstances. We know, of course, that we must not form a mental image of the human core—the spiritual and soul aspect of the human being—as if it were simply the sum total of the characteristics of the parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on. We have emphasized that just as the earthworm does not grow out of the mud, the human soul does not arise from the physical. The soul arises from the soul, just as the living arises from the living. We have emphasized that this human soul points back to a previous life and that, through birth, it enters into existence in such a way that it draws together the inherited characteristics. But in bringing this to the forefront of our understanding of the soul, we must also be clear that when we look back on a previous life, we carry over from that earlier human life—through birth—those qualities that gradually unfold in the interval between death and a new birth. We then take with us through the gateway of death what we have newly acquired between birth and death—that which we had not yet been able to draw from a previous life. Thus—as has already been emphasized—we now carry through the gateway of death everything that was acquired piece by piece in the last life. Now, as we go through life in the spirit between death and a new birth, we can unfold this in a new relationship only by not being dependent, in this new existence, on rediscovering the inherited conditions we had in our previous existence. In our previous existence, we had drawn certain qualities of our ancestors into our soul. We would find nothing new in a new existence if we were to encounter the qualities of our ancestors in the same way. So if we have incarnated in a particular century, then—in order that we may also live out our lives in this direction in a new existence—we must journey through the spiritual world until all those inherited qualities to which we were previously drawn, and to which we would continue to feel drawn as long as they remain, have been lost. Our reincarnation depends on the disappearance of those traits that have been passed down through the generations. So when we look back to our ancestors, we find in our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on, certain traits that have been carried down through heredity to our present existence. After death, we enter the spiritual world. We remain there until all the traits to which we felt drawn in this incarnation have disappeared from the hereditary line. This, however, takes many centuries, and spiritual research shows that this process lasts so many centuries that we can say, for example, that certain traits are passed down from generation to generation. It takes approximately seven hundred years for the qualities that are passed down from generation to generation to have faded to such an extent that we can say: What we once found in our ancestors has dissipated. — But now these characteristics must develop to such an extent that they, in turn, take seven hundred years to run their course. And we arrive at the point where we can specify a period of twice seven hundred years—this is, of course, only an average figure, but spiritual research reveals it as the time that elapses between death and a new birth—until the soul enters existence once more through a new birth.

[ 28 ] First and foremost, we must understand that everything here on Earth that is already spiritual extends upward into this spiritual world. We have just emphasized that what we take into our spirit is creative out there in the spiritual world. We have seen that, in a certain sense, we ourselves are present in this creative world through our own creative nature. This spiritual world, which is creative in the outer realm, is reflected in a certain way within our own soul. To the extent that our own soul experiences the spiritual and lives a spiritual life, the spiritual-soul experiences within us are also inhabitants of the spiritual world. Just as the spiritual world extends down into the physical world, so our own spirituality extends upward into the general spiritual world. This, however, explains what spiritual research asserts: Whatever is in the human being in relation to its various constitutional elements sheds its outer sheaths, and what remains is the spiritual, which grows upward into the productive spiritual world; it is also clear to us that spiritual relationships—everything soul-related that takes place here in the physical world—shed their outer sheaths and live on in the spiritual world. Take, for example, the love a mother has for her child. This love grows out of the physical world. At first, it has an animalistic character. It consists of sympathies that bind mother and child, which are a kind of physical force. But then what grows out of the physical world is purified; the love between the two beings is ennobled; this love becomes more and more soulful and spiritual. Everything that springs from the physical world is cast off at death, just like the outer shells. But in return, everything that is built up in this love—all that is soulful and spiritual within this physical-human shell—remains; just as the human inner being itself lives on into the spiritual world, so that the love between mother and child lives on in the spiritual world. There they find one another again—no longer limited by the barriers of the physical world, but in that spiritual environment where we do not have things outside of ourselves, but where we live, weave, and are within the things themselves. Therefore, one must create a mental image of what prevails in the spiritual world as the result of the relationships of love and friendship established in the physical world; one must have in one's mental image those who have united in the spiritual world as persons who are far more intimately connected than the bonds of love and friendship formed in the physical world. And it is nonsensical to ask whether we will see again, after death, those with whom we live together in love and friendship in the physical world. Not only do we see them, but we live within them; we are, so to speak, poured out over them. And everything that is woven within the confines of the sensory world only acquires its true meaning and significance when we grow upward into the spiritual world with the spiritual aspect of it.

[ 29 ] Thus we see the spiritualization not only of the individual but of humanity in its noblest aspects in the spiritual realm that the human being experiences between death and a new birth. There, too, all the impulses that the human being has carried into the spiritual world are transformed into living archetypes. We have seen, after all, that a human being enters the spiritual world with an essence of the etheric or Life-Body—that is, with an essence of all the experiences he has had between birth and death. We see the human being enter the spiritual world with that powerful impulse that enables him to make amends for the wrongs he has committed. Human beings weave this together into a spiritual archetype. And the time they spend in the spiritual world unfolds in such a way that this archetype is woven more and more, so that it increasingly incorporates the fruits of the previous life and the urge, the will to make amends for the wrongs, the ugly deeds they have committed. And so, during that time, the human being is capable, on the one hand, of vividly shaping into the body made available to him at reincarnation all the abilities he has acquired in previous lives; on the other hand, because he has woven into his archetype the urge, the impulse, to make amends for the wrongs, ugly, or evil, and is drawn to circumstances that allow him to make amends for this wrongdoing and ugliness he has committed. Through birth, we enter existence with the will to enter into circumstances that allow us to make amends for the imperfections of our past lives. Thus, driven by a hidden will, we seek out pain in appropriate situations when, out of our prenatal impulse, we have the unconscious realization that only by overcoming this pain can we clear away certain obstacles that we previously placed in our own path.

[ 30 ] Thus we see how the human being passes through the spiritual world, where, even before the new birth, he can shape his physical body. And now we also see how what we have woven into our archetype only gradually unites with our life after birth. For those who believe that everything—all the abilities and soul capacities that develop in life—is already present within the child do not understand life. Those who can view life correctly see the human being enter into existence through birth and observe how the human being only gradually finds themselves in life, how in the early years the human being by no means already possesses within themselves, in their entirety, what they are capable of becoming. We can understand life much better if we say: A human being unites only gradually with what they have woven as a spiritual archetype in the life between death and a new birth; little by little, they grow together with it until they face the outside world in a free interplay. — Anyone who observes life without prejudice can see how, as a child, a human being is still enveloped by the spiritual atmosphere they have woven for themselves between death and a new birth, and how they gradually adapt to their own archetype, which they have not yet interwoven with the physicality they bring with them at birth. While the animal is already interwoven with its archetype from birth, we see the human being growing into—individually and purposefully—the archetype that he has woven for himself through repeated earthly lives up to this last one. And we understand the physical-sensory aspect of human life best when we conceive of it in this way: it is truly like the shell of an animal, an oyster, that we find along the way. As long as we try to understand it as merely assembled—say, out of mud—we will never be able to grasp this shell. But if we assume that what appears to have been deposited layer by layer on the shell has been excreted from the interior of an animal that has shed this shell, then we understand the structure.

[ 31 ] Human life between birth and death—we cannot understand it if we try to grasp it solely in and of itself, if we try to understand it by merely drawing on what is in its immediate surroundings. We can go on and on saying that human beings adapt to their environment, their people, and their family. Just as we cannot understand an oyster shell without an oyster, so too will human life remain incomprehensible to us if we view it solely as having emerged from its immediate surroundings. But it becomes clear and lucid when we can assume that human beings come from a spiritual and soul world, and that in this spiritual and soul world they have processed the achievements, the essence, and the fruits of previous lives, and that they reshape their new existence with the help of this processing. Thus, life itself becomes comprehensible to us only through that which lies above life; thus, the physical world becomes comprehensible to us only through the spiritual and soul world.

[ 32 ] This is the human being’s cycle through the worlds of the senses, the soul, and the spirit. If we view the human being in this way, then his physical-sensory life represents, as it were, only a part of his complete life cycle. And our understanding—when we pursue it in the right way—is not merely a theoretical understanding that tells us this or that, as external science does, but rather an understanding that simultaneously shows us objectively how life between death and a new birth acquires meaning and significance, in that what we gather here is processed in a higher world. From such understanding springs knowledge and willpower for life; it gives us meaning and significance, confidence, and hope for life. We need not merely attribute to such understanding the fact that we look back desolately on past lives, of which we might say: “Well, it is claimed that we brought our own pain upon ourselves.” To the pain is added this very desolation! — No, we can tell ourselves: This law is not merely one that points to the past, but also one that points to the future, showing us that pain we have overcome is a gain in strength that we can utilize in our new life; and the more we work, the more pain we have overcome, the stronger our strength will be. In happiness, one can only suffer in a higher sense; it is a fulfillment from past lives. In pain, one can develop strength, and the strength developed through the overcoming of pain signifies an elevation for future life. And we stride confidently through the gates of death when we know that death must be brought into life so that this life can rise from stage to stage. Thus it seems well justified to say: Spiritual Science in this sense is not merely a theory; it is the lifeblood and strength of life, in that what flows directly into our entire spiritual existence makes it healthy, vigorous, and strong. — Spiritual Science is that which confirms the truth of the words that must live in the soul of every spiritual researcher—and indeed of every person who has even a faint inkling of the spiritual world—as words of truth, as guiding principles for their ever-elevating, healthy, and powerful life, a life that sees even the overcoming of pain as a source of increased strength; it confirms the words:

Mystery follows mystery in space,
Mystery follows mystery through time;
Only the mind can provide the solution,
One that reaches
Beyond the boundaries of space
And beyond the flow of time.